Mrs. Reed, 56, a healthy, vigorous woman who ran or swam every day, decided to try a series of epidural steroid injections for her neck trouble. She had been laid off from her job at a nonprofit group and wanted the treatments before her health insurance ran out.

It was a decision that ended her life. She died on Oct. 3, one of more than 130 people to have contracted meningitis in a national outbreak from a tainted drug used in spinal injections for back and neck pain. So far, 12 have died.

The drug has been recalled, but still more people are likely to become ill in the coming weeks, because the incubation period can be longer than a month. About 13,000 people injected with the drug are anxiously waiting to see if symptoms develop. The product is a steroid called methylprednisolone, which was contaminated with one or more types of fungus. It was made by a pharmacy in Massachusetts, the New England Compounding Center, and shipped to 23 states.

The company has shut down, and Massachusetts health officials said Wednesday that they had extended their investigation to Ameridose, another drug manufacturer in the state that is partly owned by Barry Cadden, who was the chief pharmacist at New England Compounding.

Mr. Cadden surrendered his pharmacy license this week, state officials said. Massachusetts has just five inspectors for more than a thousand compounding pharmacies that make drugs.

See- we didn’t even need those five regulators, because the market has already reacted. The company that made the drugs is shut down. Voila. The free market at work. Consumers now know not to buy steroid injections from this particular pharmacy.

I had this though exaclty as I was driving into work this morning. Way back in the day (early-mid 90s), I had an econ professor who was a total Randroid–and at the time I had no idea who Ayn Rand was, so at least intitally I missed the significance. While I was intrigued about ending the war on good, high quality ganja, I do remember thinking–mand I think health and safety inspections are a good thing and we should keep that going.

This whole thing makes me so angry and sad. So wrong for this to happen and for these people to die.

Our local news ran a segment on this, followed by a segment on the FDA and salmonella in food and “Why aren’t inspectors finding this?” Of course “Republicans cut funding for inspectors” never factors into the story.

Hah. As if that will ever happen with the Democrats leading the charge.

I can’t want for the “compromise” where the Democrats agree to fire 75% of drug regulators instead of 100%. Sure, the remaining regulators will be so massively overworked that they won’t be able to do anything to stop shit like this from happening, but hey, we should all be happy because the Republicans didn’t get everything they wanted. Woo hoo! Go Democrats!

See- we didn’t even need those five regulators, because the market has already reacted. The company that made the drugs is shut down. Voila. The free market at work. Consumers now know not to buy steroid injections from this particular pharmacy.

As absurd as it may seem, this truly is the perspective of hard core libertarian types. This expresses their insane world-view perfectly.

It might be interesting to experiment with this sort of thing if we eliminated limited liability corporations. Make the owners own and personally pay for her death (with their money and/or lives) and see how corporate activity changes.

Diane Rehm and her guest panelists did a show on this yesterday which sounded pretty good (at least the bits and pieces I heard). It’s available at her website.
If you can get past her slowed and halting speech (result of spasmodic dysphonia) and the fact she’s a B-team Villager, Rehm often does a pretty good job on shows like this.**where circle-the-wagons defense of her fellow Villagers isn’t involved

See- we didn’t even need those five regulators, because the market has already reacted. The company that made the drugs is shut down. Voila. The free market at work. Consumers now know not to buy steroid injections from this particular pharmacy.

You joke, but I’m pretty sure at least 27% of Americans would agree with this statement as a fact. And they vote.

The market will not only correct for unsafe food and drugs, but for airplane crashes too. With a pure free market and no federal oversight of aviation, airlines will be free to choose the state with the least safety regulations and regulatory oversight to base themselves in, and consumers will be free to choose the airlines who have the lowest fatality rate. Simple!

See- we didn’t even need those five regulators, because the market has already reacted. The company that made the drugs is shut down. Voila. The free market at work. Consumers now know not to buy steroid injections from this particular pharmacy.

The sad thing is that diehard libertarians have absolutely no problem with this. None at all.

The other point was, just like cutting the FUNDING for inspectors, cutting the FUNDING for State department security – by substantial amounts – is leaving Darryl looking at himself and the House GOP as the villain of the piece.

One of the strategies that Ronald Reagan used to destroy regulations was to slash the number and powers of inspectors and enforcement authorities.

He couldn’t change the laws requiring poultry processing plants to be inspected, but when the industry saw the opportunity to move to explosive shit-spreading mass poultry manufacturing plants, he slashed the number of inspectors likewise.

What a great, great man, helping ensure that our chickens would be generously covered in fecal matter whereas before we could only hope.

@👽 Martin: I can’t believe this election, whether it be the Senate, House or Presidential, is close. In a sane society, the current Republican party would be run out of politics and forced to reform. Instead, they’ll likely do very well in November, and we’ll continue squandering the country’s potential.

@Yutsano: Remember the beef processor that wanted to export to Japan, and so they had every steer tested for Mad Cow? They were not allowed to report their results (by the regulators!) because it was considered unfair competition to the other beef processors.

A State Department official assured him that the material was “entirely unclassified” and that the photo was from a commercial satellite. “I totally object to the use of that photo,” Chaffetz continued. He went on to say that “I was told specifically while I was in Libya I could not and should not ever talk about what you’re showing here today.”

Getting rid of the FDA and all state and municipal food and restaurant inspectors will also open up job opportunities: Independent, free-market inspectors will contract with restaurants and grocery stores, then sell subscriptions of their reports to consumers. Owners could bribe inspectors, of course — paying whatever the market will bear — but after enough customers get sick and die, word will get out and no one will go there anymore. See? The free market works! Who needs taxes?

@Yutsano: He’s been gerrymandered into my district now; words cannot express how I feel about that.

OTOH, and I hate to put it this way, he’s been coasting on the fanatic, Mexican-hating goodwill of the poor white trash living out in Vista, San Marcos and Escondido. That uncouth kind of shit won’t fly in his new, far more upscale district. He could lose to the right kind of Republican.

Sadly, this district is what it is. He won’t be losing to a Democrat anytime soon.

How would a patient know which drug manufacturer a doctor had selected when you are assured that drug xyz is the best. Have you ever asked a doctor who compounds a drug? He/she probably doesn’t know either as the brand is all he considers.

This kind of story terrifies me. My mother had visited a pain clinic to see if there were any other treatments beyond pills. Unfortunately, since she’s on Coumadin, they couldn’t do any kind of invasive treatments such as injections, because they’d have to take her off the drug for a few days and they couldn’t risk that.
Damn, I’d glad they wouldn’t

If it were up to libertarians, or maybe even Matt Yglesias, Barry Cadden wouldn’t have needed a license in the first place.

Economics lessons for Randians: Grandpa dies from an e-coli hamburger, wife Mary Lou dies from tainted injections, Sis gets kidney failure from her toothpaste, Junior burns up in his not-so-fire-retardant car seat, but what the hell, Mr. Libertarian learns where not to shop!

The death toll went up from this.
What a tragedy.
Are the House Republicans still blocking the stronger FDA law?
Didn’t the FDA take away approval of a compounded drug and the regular drug cost a lot more, but was considered safe and effective?

@hep kitty: Not until it happens to them or one of their loved ones. I’ll never forget Mort Kondrake, whose first wife died of Parkinson’s, coming out in favor of stem cell research and being roundly dissed by his Faux compatriots.

@hep kitty: If it does, they are the first to sue – tort reform be damned. After all, it’s THEIR relative, loved one, etc., not one of those greedy fraudsters who have driven up health care costs !! Same hypocrisy involved in abortion, too. It’s conservative narcissistic disease, or CND – new to the diagnostic manual.

@Villago Delenda Est: You got it. In debates, libertarians always resort to claiming that you don’t need health or environmental regulations because you can just sue people who harm you. Never mind that you won’t get much out of that if you’re dead or permanently injured — they also, in a different context, are completely against people getting sued for harming you.

As far as I can tell, the only way to really thrive in a pure libertarian system is to have precognition. And superpowers.

I was just at lunch with a young relative who works in South Africa. We were discussing health care. Apparently there is very good private care there that is extremely expensive for those who pony up the cash, and then that’s about the end of it.

Also you have to give small amounts of money to urchins when you park your car or it will be disassembled when you come out. The future of America under Republicans – the new South Africa. If we’re lucky.